[ArkansasSlim]

Rog, when I first started reading your post I actually got chills, then at the end I actually choked up and got tears. The Ouachita National Forest has several CCC recreation areas and campgrounds with cabins. Too many of them were permitted to fall apart because the "powers" in the ONF, several years ago, were not interested in maintaining them. About 20/25 years ago they hired a professional archeologist and he has fought tooth-and-toenail to preserve what is left and also to restore them. Not repair, restore! They are going back to the old CCC Camp sites, cleaning them up, and installing interpretive signs.

The above archeologist and I became good friends and one of the volunteer jobs I have had with the ONF is to catalog archival photos. Now that was a blast! Many of the scenes in the photos were significant to me because I had been there or experienced that many, many years ago.

It's been a never ending adventure and when I can no longer go I think I'll just cash in my chips.

[ArkansasSlim]

I may have posted this before but if so, would like to post it again.

MOTTO TO LIVE BY

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WAAA HOOO, what a ride!"

[Dr. Foosball]

There is a new facebook page called "Arkie Ology." I doubt many of you guys are on facebook, but if you are you should check it out.

[RogMar]

Originally Posted by ArkansasSlim

I may have posted this before but if so, would like to post it again.

MOTTO TO LIVE BY

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WAAA HOOO, what a ride!"

Zactly

An 8 second ride that doesn't end for years.

[ArkansasSlim]

I don't know if this photo was taken in Clark or Pike County but it is the inside of a cinnabar mine and was made in the 1930s. The photo was sent to me by my friend Charles Steuart who is a Professional Geologist, and was made by his uncle who was also a geologist. My Dad worked in one of these mines for a while. He said it was "hot than " back in there and was an accident waiting to happen. He quit. I never needed money bad enough to work in mines.

[ArkansasSlim]

I don't know how this is going to work out. I make archeology presentations with a slide show and this is an effort to scan and post some of those slides. This is a footbridge across Blaylock Creek on the Winding Stair Trail on the Ouachita National Forest. Before we had an archeology dig in this area, the hikers had to wade the creek, but with the dig going on we had to push wheelbarrows full of bags of dirt through there and it was impossible to cross the creek as it was. So the ONF built this footbridge for us. It was two ten inch poles bolted together, so was kinda narrow. In this photo, if it shows up, is a lady in a white shirt kinda hanging back trying to get up the nerve to cross. On the next slide I always show in my program, she is reluctantly following with that 'you aren't leaving me back here alone' look on her face.

[ArkansasSlim]

This is the Little Missouri River at Albert Pike Recreation Area on the Ouachita National Forest. This was before the flood and the camping area where the people were washed away is abut 300 meters upstream from this point. The rock bluffs you can see on the side of the mountain in the background are novaculite rock which was a favorite of the Indians for making points. Those bluffs as well as others on all the surrounding mountains were heavily quarried by the Indians several thousand years ago and the quarry debris is scattered down the sides of the mountains almost to the foot. One of the mountains in the area we have calculated has had at least six feet of it's crest quarried away. This is the area of some of the quarries I have posted in the past.

[ArkansasSlim]

When driving I'm always on the lookout for freshly exposed dirt (clear-cut, construction, etc.) along the side of the road. If I have time I stop, if there are no "keep out" signs, and look to see if I can find any archeological material. That happened here. What had been a wooded area in the southwest corner of US 270 and I 30 at Malvern had been bulldoze cleared and I saw an interesting looking small hill. Checking it out I found lots of novaculite flakes from Indian tool making and as I walked around the hill I found a small novaculite outcrop that had been heavily battered. To make sure I was seeing what I thought, I called my archeologist friend to look and he agreed. In the photo he is standing on top of the outcrop. The outcrop was later jack-hammered away and replaced by a gas station at the Malvern Super Wal-Mart and that 40+ acre wooded area is now covered by commercial buildings.

After I found the small quarry I got permission from the property owner and walked the entire property and found several novaculite exposures that were pink in color. Pink novaculite is not rare, but is seldom found.

[DC at the Ridge]

Originally Posted by ArkansasSlim

When driving I'm always on the lookout for freshly exposed dirt (clear-cut, construction, etc.) along the side of the road. If I have time I stop, if there are no "keep out" signs, and look to see if I can find any archeological material. That happened here. What had been a wooded area in the southwest corner of US 270 and I 30 at Malvern had been bulldoze cleared and I saw an interesting looking small hill. Checking it out I found lots of novaculite flakes from Indian tool making and as I walked around the hill I found a small novaculite outcrop that had been heavily battered. To make sure I was seeing what I thought, I called my archeologist friend to look and he agreed. In the photo he is standing on top of the outcrop. The outcrop was later jack-hammered away and replaced by a gas station at the Malvern Super Wal-Mart and that 40+ acre wooded area is now covered by commercial buildings.

After I found the small quarry I got permission from the property owner and walked the entire property and found several novaculite exposures that were pink in color. Pink novaculite is not rare, but is seldom found.

Thank you for sharing all your fascinating photos. It's wonderful to hear what someone like yourself with a trained eye sees that the rest of us so often miss.

[ArkansasSlim]

About 2002 or 2003 a storm came through Old Washington State Park and caused lots of damage to the trees including those in the Old Pioneer Cemetery, which in turn broke some of the 150+ year old tombstones. I met there with the State Parks Purchasing Manager to survey the damage and offer my thoughts on what it would take to get it cleaned up and repaired. There were several options, but using machinery, even with long booms, was soon ruled out because of the probability it would impact unmarked graves. The final decision was to get a crew of men to cut the trees into manageable size and actually carry the chunks out on their shoulders. Labor intensive but the only way for that fragile situation. She then contracted a professional company to repair the tombstones. After the work was completed, if you hadn't seen the damage before, you would not have known anything had happened.

Some of the graves and family plots were capped with a layer of brick. Some trees had grown up through those brick and you can see the damage in these photos. These two photos are different views of the same root ball and you can see the pulled up brick.